We set out from our hotel mid-morning, opting to stop at the local café for something along the lines of brunch. It was a very authentic neighborhood pub/café…we may have been the only people speaking English there in awhile. The food was good & somewhat less expensive than the rest of Vienna (where things just seem to be quite expensive, especially given the Euro/$ exchange rate).
We hopped on the subway towards the opera house. We were planning to take a tour of the opera house (English tours were at 1, 2 & 3pm). As we arrived early, we walked around the area & took photos from the terrace of the Albertina Museum (great view of the area). We return to the Opera at 1pm, to a sea of people. They offered tours in about 5 languages & they ended up splitting the English group into 3 separate groups. While the whole thing was a bit chaotic, they pulled it off with elan. In fact, I would say that the tour exceeded my expectations. They don’t go backstage (as they stage a different opera each night, they need the set-up time), but the main auditorium, intermission areas & other spaces were very beautiful & our guide did an excellent job explaining the significance.
After the Opera, we went to a café to take a short break. Charlie has experienced some pain in his feet & this rest period was essential. From there, we toured the National Library, one of the most beautiful rooms I have ever seen. Everything from the frescos on the ceiling to the ancient, large globes was truly beautiful. That & there were a lot of impressive old books in the shelves. Not exactly a place where you can check things out with a library card.
From the library, we continued on to the Austrian Crown Jewels. This would qualify as some “serious bling”! Certainly on par with the crown jewels in London.
At this point, Charlie decided to head back to the hotel. I continued on, walking around one of the main shopping streets & seeing the St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Because the pope would be saying mass here the following morning, there were huge video monitors outside (that were currently showing the Pope’s visit to a small Austrian town). The church was impressive enough, certainly very large. I went from there over to stroll the vast Hofburg Palace grounds. The nearly 24 hours of no precipitation started to end & I headed back to the hotel.
Charlie & I just didn’t really have any good ideas about what to do about our dinner. We walked around the shopping area near our hotel & found few good options (although my many sushi-loving friends would have liked “Fred & Ginger”). We ultimately jumped back on the subway & headed to the center. We took a slightly route from our “standard” exit station & saw an incredibly cool art installation (which we thought was an ingenious advertising billboard). Essentially, it was a series of lights shining on water, which was shot out along the lines of a dot-matrix printer. Words can’t really do it justice, but I can’t currently remember the URL (and a quick Google search came up empty). Stay tuned…
We looked at several menus & eventually came across a nice café near the opera house. Amazingly, that had something that would pass for a non-smoking section (a true rarity in Vienna). The atmosphere was very authentic, including a piano & violin serenading us (made more entertaining when a party of Spanish tourists turned the place into a sort of violin/sing-along bar). A bit later, several well-dressed couples came for what was obviously après-Opera food. Our food was superb…all-in-all a great experience, especially given our lack of planning.
It was a very busy & successful day. And given the crowds that would be converging on the center-city the following morning, it was time to leave Vienna.
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